Nowadays, various record/play systems using a variety of record mediums, are widely in use, for example, a Video Tape or Cassette Recorder, an audio tape recorder, or a Video or Compact Disc Player.
On those record mediums, one or more programmed data or programs are recorded and reproduced, and nonrecorded regions are usually set between program recorded regions, for separating the same. And regions not available for recording, for example a leader portion and a trailer portion in a video tape, are generally provided for informing the beginning and ending of the record available region to the system.
In the record available region of the record medium, a number of programs are usually recorded with the non recorded regions as dividers. Therefore, to find the start position of a program wanted or a program on normal reproducing (hereinafter, referred to as PLAY) in a conventional record/play system, it requires a series of complicated and troublesome operations of function keys, for example, keys for fast forward advancing (hereinafter referred to as F/F), fast rewinding (REW), PLAY or stop (STOP), for partly reproducing the content of recorded programs and verifying them one by one with the user's own eye and ear.
To solve the problems, some systems have been suggested for searching a required program by directions provided through a keyboard after writing search information on the record medium. For example, there are the Video Index Search System (VISS), the Video Address Search System (VASS) and the program selecting system.
In the VISS system, index information is optionally written on appropriate positions of record medium, then a required program is found by searching the index information with keyboard operation. In the VASS system, a required program is found by directing address of the program after allocating specific addresses to the each sections of the record medium. And the program selecting system is mainly adopted for a CDP system.
But, the above described systems are not suitable for general use for their complicated structures and accompanying high production costs.
Moreover, the conventional systems generate noise as they continue to reproduce the record medium until finding the end position of the medium even after completing the reproduction of the recorded region, and require a series of troublesome operations of function keys to find the start position of the recorded programs on loading the medium to the system, as described above.
And the systems cannot execute the automatic search operation when the search information is lost by local damages of the record medium, for example.